With a go-ahead home run in the 10th inning of Wednesday night’s win against the Rays, Giancarlo Stanton has continued his very impressive season in general, but also a very impressive season in his spots as a pinch-hitter. Before a strikeout in Friday night’s loss to the Red Sox, Stanton had been hitting .571/.667/1.571 with two home runs and six RBI in his nine plate appearances as a pinch-hitter.
Adding to the remarkability of this is that Stanton wasn’t always great as a pinch-hitter earlier in his career. Even including this run, his career OPS as a PH is just .636, and the two home runs this year are the only ones for his career.
As we saw with his K on Friday night, it was always going to be unreasonable for him to keep up the OPS over 2.000, but he’s still on pace to have one of the more remarkable pinch-hitting seasons in Yankees history. Along those lines, I decided to take a look back at who he would be chasing in that particular category.
At least in recent memory, Raúl Ibañez had one of the more memorable pinch-hitting moment for the Yankees. He came in as a PH in his two-homer game in Game 3 of the 2012 ALDS, somewhat shockingly entering for Alex Rodriguez (addled by an injured hip) and taking All-Star closer Jim Johnson deep to tie it up in the ninth before walking it off in the 12th. The Yankees rallied and then beat the Orioles to win that game and eventually the series.
What you might forget, especially because his overall numbers for the year weren’t quite as good as his postseason heroics suggest, was that he actually came up with the goods as a pinch-hitter a lot in 2012. In just under 30 plate appearances as a PH that year, Ibañez hit .320/.379/.640. You can also argue that his postseason heroics actually began in a late-season game against the A’s as the Yankees fought for the AL East title. After the Yankees had fallen behind 9-5 in the 13th inning, Ibañez hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the inning to tie things back up.
You probably remember Hideki Matsui’s 2009 for his MVP-winning run in the World Series, although that mostly came as a DH. However, he was also quite lethal as a pinch-hitter that year too. “Godzilla” hit .381/.500/.619 in 26 chances as a PH that season. In four of those games, he added over or just barely under 0.100 Win Probability Added, which means that four games where he increased their chances of winning by around 10 percent just on his own as a pinch-hitter. Weirdly though, the highest of those WPAs came in a game where he just doubled to reach as the tying run in the eighth inning, and he eventually came around to score in a Yankees extra innings win.
Back on the topic of the 2009 Fall Classic though, the Yankees were unable to start Matsui during the three games in Philadelphia due to the National League’s pre-universal DH rules. Thankfully, his pinch-hit excellence that year gave manager Joe Girardi all the confidence in the world that he could come up big off the bench. He did just that during the 8-5 win in Game 3, pinch-hitting for Joba Chamberlain in the eighth and delivering an insurance run with a solo shot off Brett Myers.
In doing research for this article though, I have discovered that there is one, somewhat unexpected, name who is arguably the GOAT of Yankees’ pinch-hitters. As a fan in his 30s, I mostly only know of Bob Cerv via his Chris Bauer a.k.a. Frank Sobotka-played character in the HBO movie 61*, as Cerv shared an apartment with Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in real life that year. While I can look at his Baseball Reference page and see a perfectly nice career with an All-Star Game appearance, I missed his pinch-hitting exploits.
If you set a minimum of 20 plate appearances as a Yankee pinch-hitter in a season and then sort the best by OPS, then Cerv comes out on top. In that 1961 season as his roommates were making history, Cerv hit .400/.520/.850 in those spots, with an all-time best 1.370 OPS in 25 plate appearances. However, he also makes appearances on the list at No. 24 (1955, .995 OPS), No. 25 (1954, .986), and No. 28 (1960, .984).
Joe DiMaggio looks at Bob Cerv, who evidently deserves to be admired for his pinch-hit exploits.
I owe you an apology, Bob, I wasn’t really familiar with your game.